The local ultraviolet signature of Type Ia supernova environments from HST and MUSE

Lluís Galbany; Cullen Abelson; Alaa Alburai; Joseph P Anderson; Yago Ascasibar; Chris Ashall; Carles Badenes; Chris Burns; Èlia Diéguez Gurnés; Albert García Soto; Claudia P. Gutiérrez; Eric Y. Hsiao; Hanindyo Kuncarayakti; Andrew J. Levan; Jospeh Lyman; Mark M. Phillips; Sebastian F. Sánchez; Ramon Sanfeliu; Maximilian Stritzinger; Danny Steeghs

arXiv · 2606.22173

The local ultraviolet signature of Type Ia supernova environments from HST and MUSE

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Abstract

The local environment of a Type Ia supernova (SN~Ia) traces the local stellar-population age (a statistical proxy for the progenitor age), star formation, dust, and chemical enrichment that may influence both its light-curve properties and its standardized luminosity. We assemble a homogeneous explosion-site dataset to test how near-ultraviolet (UV) imaging combined with optical integral-field spectroscopy improves the characterization of SN~Ia environments and their connection to SN~Ia observables. We analyze 340 low-redshift SN~Ia explosion sites observed with HST/WFC3 in F275W together with matched VLT/MUSE spectroscopy. For each site we measure local photometry and extract a 1~kpc-aperture spectrum, model the stellar continuum with STARLIGHT in a joint UV+optical fit, derive local stellar and gas-phase properties, and fit the SN light curves with sncosmo/SALT3-NIR. UV emission is detected at 235 of the 337 sites with valid HST imaging. The UV- and H$\alpha$-based star-formation-rate surface densities are strongly correlated, with the UV estimates systematically higher by about 0.5 dex. Including the UV constraint in the STARLIGHT fit shifts local luminosity-weighted ages toward older values by a median of $+0.20$ dex for UV detections and $+0.45$ dex for UV non-detections, showing that UV data help break age--dust--metallicity degeneracies and substantially alter and tighten the inferred local stellar-population ages within the adopted modelling framework. Consistently, F275W$-r$ is very strongly correlated with the joint-fit stellar age. Within the 169-SN~Ia calibration sample, the joint stellar age, the H$\alpha$ specific star-formation rate (sSFR), and the UV sSFR all correlate strongly with the SALT3 stretch parameter $x_1$, with significances above $6.8\sigma$. (abridged)

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Lluís Galbany, Cullen Abelson, Alaa Alburai, Joseph P Anderson, Yago Ascasibar, Chris Ashall, Carles Badenes, Chris Burns, Èlia Diéguez Gurnés, Albert García Soto, Claudia P. Gutiérrez, Eric Y. Hsiao, Hanindyo Kuncarayakti, Andrew J. Levan, Jospeh Lyman, Mark M. Phillips, Sebastian F. Sánchez, Ramon Sanfeliu, Maximilian Stritzinger, Danny Steeghs. 2026-06-20. The local ultraviolet signature of Type Ia supernova environments from HST and MUSE. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22173

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